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Answer 1

+1 A:

AFAIK, there is no legal way to virtualize Mac OS X (client), only OS X Server. I think the answer in the previous question was in regards to running multiple OS X Server instances.

Ned Deily 2009-09-08 00:14:43

Ah OK. I was getting terminology all confused. God, developing and testing for Mac is so expensive!

psychotik 2009-09-08 00:19:08

Probably the simplest solution is to get a Firewire hard drive, initialize it with several partitions, and separately install the various versions of OS X you want on each partition. It's then easy to select at boot time which OS you want. Depending on what you want to test, it can be a little tricky to isolate if one OS X does files recovery on an older or newer partition but normally that's not a problem.

Ned Deily 2009-09-08 00:35:10

And if you're really careful, you can create multiple partitions on the internal HD, obviating the need for the external HD, but they're pretty cheap.

Ned Deily 2009-09-08 00:37:56

Answer 2

A:

VMWare Fusion can run 10.5/10/6 client VMs, but you will have to trick it into installing by editing the OS install disc.

There are some problems with this method, as enumarted by someone who tried it:

DVD Player Does not function has error (-70017)
Most Of The Screen Savers do not work.
Front Row Loads to Black Screen
Screen recording in Quicktime produces error (OSStatus error -108)
Sound Does not Work Bug in all Mac os's When Virtualised
System Profiler cannot find alot of information about the system components .
Startup time is slow under the virtual environment of 20 Seconds

Depending on the requirements of your testing, these may or may not be deal-breakers for you.

To trick VMWare into thinking that a client 10.5 or 10.6 disc is actually server, you have to edit Fusion's base image for new VMs:

sudo bash
cd "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/isoimages"
mkdir original
mv darwin.iso tools-key.pub *.sig original
sed "s/ServerVersion.plist/SystemVersion.plist/g" < original/darwin.iso > darwin.iso
openssl genrsa -out tools-priv.pem 2048
openssl rsa -in tools-priv.pem -pubout -out tools-key.pub
openssl dgst -sha1 -sign tools-priv.pem < darwin.iso > darwin.iso.sig
for A in *.iso ; do openssl dgst -sha1 -sign tools-priv.pem < $A > $A.sig ; done
exit

Then to install the OS:

If you try to install it will give an Eboot error so you need to go to the advanced install by pressing F8. Then while in there use -v -install and it should install.

Coxy 2009-09-08 03:08:31

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Virtualize mac client OS on OS X server

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